Hernandez Happens. Every Day.

During a bail hearing at Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River on Thursday, prosecutors said "the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming."

BOSTON -

If you are a person who likes good weather, good news, and goodwill in general, it has not been a good month.

June began with tropical storm Andrea setting rainfall records up and down the northeast.

It doesn’t seem like it has stopped raining since.

In Boston, the good feelings of community and resilience which followed the April terror attacks gave way to the start of the James "Whitey" Bulger trial, where the city’s most famous mobster is charged with at least nineteen murders.

And the Bruins came up two wins short of the Stanley Cup.

But just when June seemed like it had reached its highest level of lousy, came stunningly upsetting news: New England Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged with orchestrating a pre-meditated, cold-blooded, execution-style murder.

The team fired him. The city and the region recoiled.

We are by now, alas, used to our sports heroes regularly letting us down, shedding their hero status by way of drugs, dumbness, or other conduct-unbecoming. We are not used to seeing them shackled and frog-marched out of their homes and charged with murder.

Or possibly three.

Officials now say that Hernandez is also being investigated in connection with the double-homicide of two young men a year ago in Boston.

Personally, I could care less about Aaron Hernandez or the fact that he’s squandered a promising pro football career. I care more about the carnage he may have left behind, and the child he will likely be leaving fatherless.

The picture that disturbs me most is not Hernandez standing impassively in court hearing the charges against him; it’s the one of him holding his newborn daughter less than a year ago.

But here’s what’s most disturbing of all. Because of Hernandez’ sports celebrity status, his arrest is national news. Here in Boston, the day of his arrest and courtroom appearance were deemed worthy of wall-to-wall live TV coverage. Was it?

Consider: on that very same day elsewhere in America, over 80 other people died of gun-related crimes. Since Hernandez’ arrest, that number has risen. By next Wednesday—one week from the arrest—over 500 more Americans will have died due to gun violence.

Will you know any one of them? Hopefully not. Will any one of those murders be reported in Hernandez-like detail with breathless, continuing, live coverage?

Don’t be silly.

“Unless it's your family member or friend, most Americans don't pay attention or do anything,” says John Rosenthal, a Boston real estate developer and founder of Stop Handgun Violence. I asked him to share his thoughts in the wake of the Hernandez arrest.

“More Americans die from gun violence in the US every month and a half than died during the 911 terrorist attacks or in Afghanistan and Iraq combined,” Rosenthal observes.

Some of the victims are as young as Aaron Hernandez’ young daughter. You don’t know their names. And that’s the larger tragedy here.

The NRA is fond of saying, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”

That’s true.

Guns don’t make laws or look out for public safety, either. People do.

And people continue to make guns too widely available, and too easy to be put in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.

“Gun violence is a public health epidemic as a result of public apathy and Congressional complicity with the uniquely unregulated and absurdly greedy gun industry,” John Rosenthal says.

While you’re reading this, more Americans are dying today thanks to guns and our collective unwillingness to curb their availability in even small, reasonable ways.

Shame on us.

And shame on my industry for focusing on a celebrity gunman, while mostly ignoring the obscene daily toll of the faceless, nameless victims of those guns.